“Grand strategy” game Storm Over The Pacific came out, rather quietly, in June. But a demo for it has just appeared in the last 24 hours. The game by Wastelands Interactive, which perhaps not surprisingly follows the Ultra Mega War 2 battles taking place over Asia and the Pacific ocean, can be bought from Impulse for a really rather incredibly expensive £39, or from GamersGate for a still rather AAA price of £35. And that’s just the digital download. However, perhaps this is exactly where you want to spend your money, and you can find out playing the demo. It offers you 15 turns of the Pacific campaign, but without the ability to save.

I guess the pricing is due to this being a niche “hobbyist” title rather than an “indie gamer” title. I remember Solium Infernum had some issues where people were complaining it should be priced at indie game levels, but the developer countered with saying that it was priced reasonably for a hex wargame hobbyist title.

I hate the demos for these kind of games they give you not much time to actually see how good the game is. Just give us a whole battle or just one battle you can do over and over again and i could see how good the game is. 15 turns is not enough time usually…by that time you’ve basically produced one man and moved him a bit. Rant over.

The price is reasonable because:
1) It’s a niche game, not many of similar games are made
2) if you are a fan, you might consider it as a investment, so there can be more games/DLCs/updates/expansions like that = win

Thats what i meant. If someone brought out a game of say, Necromunda or which explored procedural generation applied as an environments for neural net based animats. But an ugly game about a war with no civilian element? No ta. To each there own and to own their each of course.

Of course its niche – its £35 for what looks like an expanded flash game!

If this was £10 or £15 I’d take a look.

I played the demo of a similar naval strategy game set in the Pacific a year or two ago, and went to buy it only to find that it was $50. I also found the dev’s blog with a rant about people pirating the game. What do they expect when their pricing model exists in another dimension to the rest of the gaming world? To anyone not already versed in hex strategy this pricing looks insane.